


Duellum

by bogged



Series: Nubile Young Celebrities [3]
Category: Actor RPF, American Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Disney RPF, Harry Potter RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-04
Updated: 2009-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogged/pseuds/bogged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everyone is rather drunk and mean to everyone else. Part of the Nubile Young Celebrity 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duellum

_Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,  
Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,  
Vengent bientôt l'épée et la dague traîtresse.  
— Ô fureur des coeurs mûrs par l'amour ulcérés!  
—Duellum; Charles Baudelaire_

There were a multitude of people Dan would rather be talking to right now—well, that's not exactly right. There were a multitude of people Dan felt would be more understanding of and sympathetic to his situation right now, enough to fill his entire dining room table with the leaves fully extended, but they had all obviously conspired against him and had situated themselves in time zones wherein it would be hellish and rude of him to call at such an hour. All except one, who is in town on a press tour.

"Hello? _Hell-ooo?_ I can't hear you at all," her voice is shrill beneath the rhythmic bump and trill of the music that seems to be emanating in waves from the black lacquer on the walls of the lounge. Dan had been trying in vain for the past hour to locate the lounge's speakers in what he considered a valiant effort at distracting himself from the spine tingling urge to sink his teeth directly into the skin on Zac's boyfriend's cheek and rip with abandon until the bastard was not dead, maybe, but at least rendered incapable of speech.

"Sorry," Dan says into his mobile as he presses his knuckles, chilly from the vodka tonic he is holding, against his unoccupied ear. The drink is at this point more fancy, long lasting ice cubes in the shape of the club's monogram than anything else, Dan having ravaged it minutes before in yet another effort to keep his mouth shut. While trying to maneuver through the glossy LA crowd filling all corners of the building with their plastic surgery, dangerously protruding jewelry and unfair tallness, Dan partially loses his sense of balance and wavers more than walks onto the patio.

A cool burst of air ruffles up into his hair, the smell of cigarette smoke and candle wax blows onto his face as the sound of a tapering waterfall pets his ears. He quickly eyes a dark corner away from the heat lamps and polygonal light sculptures he's sure someone with poor taste thinks are art and which surround the patio bar, and beelines for the rare clear patch before any one of the many drunkenly wayward couples get the same idea.

"Sorry," Dan repeats and sighs. He pleads with the watery mess at the bottom of his glass to have some vodka in it and is rewarded with less than a sip-worth. His shoulders jump as the cold ice cubes ram into his lips. "Is this better?"

"Yes," Emma says. She sounds tired, but she has always sounded tired to Dan. "What's up?"

"It's Thom," Dan says, sticking out his tongue and crinkling his nose as though the name smells rotten on his breath.

"Thom, Thom... oh. Right. Zac's boyfriend," Emma trails off, likely wanting to say a million things but knowing better. While half a life of almost daily contact with Emma has allowed Dan to forge a hefty list of things he feels she could improve about herself, he will never in good conscious say she is not smart.

"Yes, that one. He is being abhorrently himself tonight and it's doing my head in," Dan says, turning his voice away from the people around him.

"Okay," Emma says. "What would you like me to say?"

Dan rolls his eyes and makes a small, spleened sound.

"I just wanted a chat is all. I can't talk to Zac for reasons that should be obvious and I can't seem to open my mouth around Thom without offending some delicate part of his highly dysfunctional psyche. Did you know that he spells his name with an 'h'? T-h-o-m. He's one of _those_. Personally, I think the 'h' is his own doing, like a complete twat."

Emma does not even bother to move the phone away from her tiny mouth as she sighs heavily. Even though she will always be younger than him, assuming Dan does not die before her, within months of first meeting they had quickly found themselves falling into the roles of younger brother and older sister. They purposefully push the edges of their relationship, causing intentional strain for no other reason than that it feels right and they cannot help themselves.

"Only," here Emma pauses again. Dan thinks he hears her keyboard tapping, but that gentle clicking could also be his fingernails dancing against his almost impressively overpriced drink glass. "Only you'd be better for ignoring him and making life easier on everyone, including myself. Is it you three? Why'd you bother at all?"

"Going out?"

"Mmm," Emma makes a noise like her lips are wrapped around something and Dan punts the image directly out of his brain and grinds it into the ground with the toe of his black leather boot, a strange but welcome gift from Prada for no reason he can imagine, assuming he has not done something incongruous during one of the functional blackouts he has been drinking himself into ever since the Sunday Morning Blowjob Incident. It's not that Dan wants to forget or is even trying to build up the courage to reciprocate, he doesn't need help with that, it's just that he has been suffering beneath a significantly higher pressure load of thoughts for the past almost month, and when Dan humors himself his oral fixation flares up and he drinks in doubletime, ruthlessly murdering entire boxes of plastic straws and tonguing ice cubes into obsolescence.

"I guess it's a Friday and I work very hard and I felt like getting out of the house, Emma," Dan says and it sounds far more accusatory than he'd meant it. "I'm not abstaining from things I enjoy simply for Thom." He grinds his teeth against the waning black straw. "'M not that petulant."

"I never said that."

They are both silent for a time long enough to be awkward were it between any other two people.

"I call him Thumb, sometimes," Dan says.

"Thom?" Emma sounds a bit incredulous, as though she wants to be condescending but can't be bothered with the sentiment. "Why do you call him that?"

"I dunno," Dan removes the straw from his drink, folding the tip back and forth with his tongue. "Because it's spelled similarly. Also he sticks out all weird, like a thumb. And Zac can't seem to function without him, lately. And actually," the tip of the straw bites into Dan's tongue and he makes a clicking noise at the slight pinch, "He sort of looks like a thumb, now I've mentioned it."

"You need your thumbs as well, you're aware," Emma, the realist, the factual.

"Shhh," Dan smiles.

"Do not shush me, Daniel," Emma says. "You know I hate it."

"There, there," Dan goads. "Shhhh, there you are. Quiet, now." He bites the inside of his lip to keep from laughing, which he knows will actually cause Emma upset.

"Are you quite finished?"

"I think so," Dan says.

"Good, well I—"

"Shh—ohp!" Dan's voice jumps with false spontaneity. "Sorry, Ems. That one slipped out. I'm finished now. Honest."

Radio silence.

"Honest!" Dan repeats, letting a cough-sounding laugh escape. Emma makes an absent-sounding noise like she's gone back to her computer and Dan forces himself to breathe in slow motion, savoring the crisp bite in the night air.

"I should likely be heading inside soon. Thanks for listening," Dan says.

"You're welcome," she says and her voice is a little sweet. It may be the alcohol, but Dan feels a warm surge beneath his ribs and places his free hand on the spot, tender.

"If you find the time while you're here," Dan begins, but Emma cuts him off.

"I'll ring you, I promise."

"Any time, really."

"Understood."

"Right, well, thanks again," Dan pauses. "Emma?"

"Dan?"

"Love you."

"You too." Dan cannot see her but he can tell that his sudden tipsy openness has caused her to look away from whatever is so distracting for a moment. "I'll text, I promise," she says. "Good night. And try to be nice!" She tosses in as an afterthought.

"Night," Dan says, making the executive decision to have not heard the last part.

+++

Dan walks into the kitchen, pours himself a glass of water from the filter pitcher and drinks deep, the small of his back digging into the beveled ridge of the countertop. He turns around to put the glass in the sink and jumps upon turning back. Zac has all but materialized behind him, silent and a little too close for conversation.

"Cup," is all he says as he stretches his long bread crust arm up and over Dan's shoulder and into the cupboard next to his head. He pulls out a tumbler-sized glass. Dan makes to move to the side, out of the way, but Zac puts a hand on Dan's chest. He has only placed the hand there, is not even pressing much at all, but Dan finds himself to be pinned. He unconsciously licks his bottom lip.

With the hand not pressed to Dan's sternum, Zac curves the glass around Dan's side, the tense arm there pressing tight against himself, and fills it with cool water from the tap. Without removing his palm from the fading blue of Dan's shirted chest, he drains the liquid in an easy three or four gulps. When he is finished he lowers the glass and, with a smile, looks at Dan.

Dan's eyes snap up from where he has been staring at the muscles pulling and pushing in Zac's neck. Their eyes meet for only a moment; Dan looks down to the hand warming his chest like a spotlight.

"It's really soft," Zac says, lifting up his palm to finger the fabric, rolling it between callused fingers with the dextrous touch of a man who has known quality in his clothing.

"Erm," Dan says. He sounds marginally breathless. "It's quite old."

"I see," Zac murmers, as though the age of Dan's t-shirt is something to be considered, like an artist's process. He presses his palm flat once again, this time pushing his hand up and under Dan's blazer so that his fingertips curve into the dip in Dan's clavicle.

Dan swallows and Zac remembers swallowing him.

"I'm probably going to kiss you now," Zac says. He spends one second looking into Dan's eyes, a swift challenge, and then leans in. He has not expected Dan to lean into the kiss, which he has, so their lips meet rough and firm. They soften quickly, though, and Zac mostly drops the glass into the sink so that he can use his other hand to touch as well. He cups the back of Dan's head, down by the neck where his hair has only just begun to curl itself in its desire for a cut.

Dan breathes a soft moan at first contact and it escapes around his tongue, which he has just put in Zac's mouth. Zac gives a grateful sound of his own and presses his hips into Dan, not too hard. He can feel that Dan has hardened slightly and is sure Dan can feel his own somewhat erection. Zac wonders how old they will be when only a minute or two of kissing will cease to be enough to arouse to the point of detection and decides, as Dan somehow curves up into the kiss and melts in sequence, that maybe this is something you just don't get over. This arousal, the bright light joy Zac gets out of a good kiss, well, that may never stop making his dick hard.

"You've got to stop being so good at this," Dan says, pulling away only far enough so that his lips brush against Zac's with every consonant and his tongue touches Zac's mouth on the "th"-sound. Dan smiles on top of Zac's mouth and puts both hands on the back of his head, pulling Zac down onto him, into him, taking control of the kiss.

Zac puts his hands beneath Dan's blazer to push the black fabric down his shoulders, when the doorbell rings.

Silence, and then, "Fuck."

If asked, neither would recall speaking.

+++

Dan is dreaming of kitchen counter sex with a pair of long toast legs when an unpleasant sound tears him away from the only time he will feel good all day. Thom is speaking and that is just the absolute last thing Dan has ever wanted to wake up to. His anger supersedes his hangover for a moment, but sure as death and taxes it approaches.

His tongue has been pulled out and replaced with a swatch of roadkill hide. There are a million tiny fists beneath the skin wrapped too tightly around his skull, punching with a fervor to escape. His eyes have raisined and he can feel every putrid hair in his nose, the separate molecules of his zombie breath ranking up his throat. His stomach is sick warm and lumpy, too full with curds of milk. If he moves, Dan is sure his limbs will crust away from his body and splinter into pieces so small he will never be able to recapture them all. He is a shitshow.

"There's a trash can there, if you need it," Thom says in that highfaluting tone of his, the one he reserves special for sinners who get blackout drunk and unflinching Athiests, of which Dan is both.

Dan makes a sound like a camel's death rattle as Thom says his goodbyes. The proximity of his footsteps down the front stairs helps Dan realize where he is lying and that he is going to die on the living room couch.

After a few minutes of silence, Zac speaks, his tone a smirk.

"Hey man, Thom went to go get In-n-Out. You wanted a 4-by-4 animal style, right?"

"I will vomit directly into your mouth," Dan responds. "If you talk of food for one more fucking second."

"Gross," Zac laughs.

"I'm dying."

"Stop getting so drunk, then."

"Clever."

"Can I turn on the TV?" Zac asks and Dan can practically hear his thumb hovering over the power button on the remote no one but Zac and Dan seem capable of comprehending, no matter how often they attempt an explanation to stay over guests. Dan sort of squirms deeper into the couch and Zac takes that as permission. "I'll keep it quiet," he offers.

Dan attempts to keep his mind out of his body by trying to follow whatever skateboarding documentary Zac has managed to track down on the obscure niche channels having too much money will get you. He tries to picture the moves in his head by piecing together the narrator's descriptions, the semantics lying in their names and the Youtube videos and DVDs Zac has forced him to watch on lazy days off, unbrushed teeth and large bowls of pasta on their laps. He is not doing very well, he doesn't think, but it beats dry heaving off of the side of the couch.

"You were a mess last night," Zac says, breezy. "You puked in a homeless guy's shoe."

Dan has cocooned himself in blankets so tight that only his eyes are vaguely visible. He pictures himself throwing up in a shoe, focuses his meagre mental energies on that image, screwing up his face in the effort.

"No, I don't remember that," he finally says, exhaling. "Sounds brilliant, though. Mind telling if I did anything else?"

"Fuck, man," Zac laughs. "What's the last thing you remember?" He has turned away from the TV and is looking at Dan's living corpse, head on crossed arms on the side of an overstuffed armchair.

"Being at the bar, I think. I rang Emma, Thom bought a round and now I am dying," Dan accuses.

"Okay let's see," Zac says. "We were walking out of the bar, you said you felt sick, a homeless man offered you his shoe and you said that no, you couldn't possibly, it was his shoe to puke in, but then you puked in it and went on and on about how grateful you were, gave the guy a $50 and asked him if he had any gum. Surprisingly he did."

"_Rank_," Dan says. "I ate homeless person gum?"

"You ate homeless person gum," Zac confirms. "You also spent the entire taxi ride home convincing the driver that you two should get matching 'LIVE TO FUCK/FUCK TO LIVE' tattoos."

"Oh no," Dan groans, gingerly touching his back, that being the obvious best place to permanently ink LIVE TO FUCK/FUCK TO LIVE on one's body.

"You didn't," Zac says. "You did however tell Thom that he should, and I quote, 'stop rimming Jesus and get a real job.'"

Dan coughs to cover a snort. Shortly after, the front door opens and Dan closes his eyes and burrows deeper into the folds of the couch, both to avoid Thom and to block the smell of food from his nostrils.

"Hey, Thom," Zac says. "I was just telling Danica here how charming and pleasant he was last night."

What a git move, Dan thinks. Half-sighing, half-whining he pulls the covers off of his face and clears his throat, clicks his tongue petulantly against his teeth.

"I'm sorry I told you to get a real job," Dan says. "Your job is very real. I suppose even programs on the Bible Channel need actors, even secret gay ones like yourself."

Thom slams a cheeseburger onto the kitchen table, an angry plop.

"For the last time," he says. "It's the Christian Broadcasting Network, not 'the Bible Channel' or 'White Male Programing' or 'the Power of Christ Compels You to Watch This Channel' or anything else. Christian. Broadcasting. Network. I can remember all the titles of the stupid movies you're in, so I think you can do the same for me."

Dan's eyes are wide as he throws a look at Zac, who is biting the inside of his mouth and desperately trying not to laugh. Even though Dan is sure Zac would never admit it, they both agree that Thom's job is at best ridiculous and often insulting, like when he's hired to play a Nice Midwestern American Boy who is tempted by Satan, turns gay and immediately dies of AIDS after masturbating to the senior photo of a male peer.

"Wow," Dan finally says, allowing Thom the chance to calm down. "I'm sorry. I had no idea." He does not sound at all genuine.

"That's okay," Thom says, his heartland Nebraska naivete showing. "Just, get it right, is all. It's not like I _like_ my job, but I have to get my foot in someone's door, you know?" He shoves a handful of fries into his mouth. "We're not all lucky enough to be Harry Potter."

"Got it."

"Good."

"Oh, Thom?" Dan cautions to lift himself slightly off of the couch. "I was wrong, before, to tell you to stop rimming Jesus. He came to me in a vision and told me you may rim him as often as you like." And here Zac can't help but shake with laughter, his head in his arms as Dan continues. "On the seventh day, the good Lord invented rimming. And lo! Verily, he saw that it felt _good_—this is really making my hangover feel better, by the way."

"I genuinely hate you," Thom says from the kitchen, chewing thunderously, his untamed auburn hair flopping stupidly against his cheeks. Dan has never seen Thom act but assumes he must be made to wear wigs in his roles as he has never in his life seen a good Christian boy with such flamboyant lion hair.

"You've no idea," Dan says, "what hate is." Zac is quiet, now. Dan lies back down and rolls over, willing himself asleep.

+++

When Dan is dragged up from under his eyelids, it is to the repetitive slap of skin on skin. His body tenses, freezes, teeth in his lip to make sure he is awake. Zac and Thom are definitely having sex somewhere that is not upstairs in Zac's room, but Dan cannot place how close they are. As he opens his ears to listen for some sort of clue, he hears a long moan that is distinctly Zac.

Swallowing, Dan realizes he was hard before he even woke up.

"Bastard," he whispers.

Having no other way about it, Dan stretches his body out lengthwise. The movement does not cause the rhythm to jar, so he assumes they cannot see him. Slowly, he peers out from beneath the blankets that have caused him to sweat in the afternoon doldrums.

As though suffering from great pains, he rolls over, eyes crunched closed and a traitorous hand on the uprising in his pants. An invisible vice releases itself and one eye falls open.

Dan sees them, then, fucking each other in the hallway, up against the wall directly across from his bedroom. Dan follows the trail of discarded clothing up the hallway to where Zac is bent over nude against the wall. His arms are right angles, forearms flat against the cold paint quickly turning slick with the up, down, up friction of his fuck thrusts. His palms are flat against the wall as his fingertips curl against the concrete, grappling for a stronghold. His hair is in his eyes as he looks behind him over his shoulder, his face set, his sex sounds angry.

Thom is curved behind him, a chair supporting Zac's body in all the wrong ways. His hand is grasping Zac's dick, moving almost in symmetry with his own thrusting. His thin, long hair spreads over Zac's shoulder as he cranes to bite the crook of Zac's neck.

Dan can't help but look at Zac's ass, at Thom's junk entering and exiting, a neurotic indecision. Seconds later, Zac makes a rasping desperate sound that brings Dan's eyes back up to face-level. Unexpectedly, terrifyingly, he makes eye contact with Zac.

Eyes wide, it can't be contained. Dan's mind gives up its control on his body and in one fluid moment he is lurching, face first, sour sweat and stinging tears, releasing his bile as he vomits loud into the bin Thom has so graciously thought to provide him.

+++

Dan returns to their corner table, feeling instantly congested the moment he walks back into the lounge from the back patio. Zac and Thom are sitting close, talking near. Zac looks up upon Dan's return, all wide simple smiles and sincere eyes.

"Everything okay, man?" he asks.

"Yep," Dan says, clearing his throat.

Before Dan can sit down, Thom stands and announces that he is buying the next round.

"Whiskey double for me," Zac says. Thom looks at Dan, eyebrows raised.

"Vesper, please," Dan says. "Neat."

"A vespa?" Thom asks. "Like the bike?"

"Ves-_per_," Dan repeats, rolling his eyes.

"I've never heard of that," Thom says, amused.

"Really?" Dan asks, incredulous, an eyebrow crooked. "You've never heard of a vesper martini."

"Guess not."

"As in, Vesper Lynd."

Silence.

"Vesper _Lynd_," Dan repeats. He shoots a _sotto_ glare at Zac, who shrugs.

Silence again.

"Fucking James Bond!" Dan exclaims, throwing up his arms in defeat. He pushes past Thom and slams himself next to Zac, something he was planning on doing after Thom had left until the uninformed git once again showed his proclivity toward obliviousness. Thom only shrugs and toddles toward the bar.

"Can you fucking believe that?" Dan asks, shaking his head and settling into the drunken pool of melted candle wax heat Zac exudes. "It's like he's never seen a movie before."

Zac laughs and throws his drink back. Dan wants desperately to lick up the length of Zac's neck, to taste the light reflected in the hue of his skin. When Zac puts his glass down, Dan has one elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, head cocked slightly, fingertip troubling his bottom lip.

"What?" Zac smiles.

"Nothing," Dan says, far from the truth. He turns his head and the finger at his lip slips over his teeth. Unconsciously, he bites down on the tip. Eyes scanning over the shadows of dancers, he says, "My drinks are hitting me, I think, is all."

"Perfect timing!" Zac exclaims with arms wide as Thom returns with their drinks. Zac grabs his like a child and takes a sweet pull, sighing and swaying along with the music.

Dan takes a sip of his martini, skeptically scrunching his eyebrows together at Thom over the rim of his glass. He swallows and concedes a happy defeat. It's a fine drink.

The three of them sit like that in silence, imbibing. Zac to the right, pink-cheeked and happy simply to exist in a world with other people. Thom to the left, thrumming his fingers against his thigh and making eyes at a lithe black man gyrating against a much older man in Ed Hardy.

And then there is Dan, in the middle, his head full of waves. The music lobotomizes him and he drinks his cocktail without pacing. Shortly after he finishes, Zac reaches behind him to touch Thom and tell him something surely inane. As he does, his fingers scratch against Dan's back, leaving warm slime trails as Dan's breathing begins to shallow and shapes blur out.

Dan feels Zac's warm breath on his cheek, laughs at something he cannot hear as his world turns to black.

**Author's Note:**

> [Multiple translations of the titular poem.](http://fleursdumal.org/poem/204)


End file.
